'Dogs Happy with Effort, Win in 2012 Home Opener

Duluth, MN (Northland's NewsCenter) --- The University of Minnesota-Duluth (UMD) football team beat Winona State 38-16 this past Saturday night, marking the team's home opener in this 2012 season.

"It was a lot of fun. We came out and had a lot of things go right," UMD sophomore linebacker Gavin Brown said. "Some little things went wrong that we can tweak, but we came out with the win. It was really, really fun."

Brown led the Bulldogs on Saturday with XX tackles, part of a defensive unit that also forced two turnovers in the contest.

Senior tight end Ben Helmer had a touchdown catch in the game's fourth quarter, and he said it's always fun playing at Malosky Stadium.

"It's always a blast getting back out in front of the home crowd again," Helmer said. "It felt like a gigantic crowd for the first game of the season. It was just a lot of fun getting back out here in front of the crowd and mixing it up with a good opponent like Winona State."

UMD got two touchdowns from sophomore wide receiver Aaron Roth, one of them coming via an 89-yard kickoff return in the second quarter. He said it's nice to score, but it's more important that the team accomplished its goal.

"That was the goal, to come out here for our home opener and get the win," Roth said. "We started slowly, but then we picked it up. The ground game started to wear down Winona, which was a big thing, and then we just kind of outmuscled them."

UMD is now (2-0) this season and will next be in action on September 15 on the road to Concordia-St. Paul, with kickoff in that one set for 6:00 p.m.